Three Tankers and a Child
by Synthesis
Summary: Tentatively known as 'Evangelion New Journal Version: Bethany Base', the story of Bethany Base's Chertkovsky Tank Regiment and their relationship with the pilot of Eva Unit 05.


**Three Tankers and a Child**

_Journal Entry, 1-4-2014. _

_Pilot Makinami spoke to me today, after the staff briefing. She wanted to see No. 013 in action, she didn't say why besides being curious. Spoke to Kombat Novikov immediately, who thankfully wasn't angry. Told me he'd work something out, not to worry about it. _

_(Addendum) Just got orders from Novikov. Tomorrow at 0600, Tank No. 013 and its crew will board the UNSS _Regulus_, a navy cargo ship that's running trials out of Bethany for its new engines. Pilot Makinami will be allowed to join us on 'scheduled leave'. We're given a full cell of petrol and twelve practice shells, no idea how, or why, the Kombat swung that, but that's fine by me. Hope Makinami shows up, or we'll feel like fools driving tight circles on a big boat. _

6:00 am. Of course, to actually have a main battle tank ready to operate on the Bethany Bay docks under Acheron by six in the morning meant waking up at 3:30 am, going through the usual routine, and spending another hour prepping the tank. Thank God they kept their tanks in ready-operate status, they just needed to top-off the tank and run the checks. The armory chief, looking quite annoyed, pointed them in the direction of the practice shells and a wagon to move them, so most of their time was spent sticking them into the ammo carousel.

Aleksandr, still yawning incessantly, felt a little bad for having dragged the rest of his crew out this early: Vanya had to literally be pulled out of bed for this, and Mikhail was not remotely pleased at the situation, and handled it like the old man he was at heart. Aleksandr had to spin it as an exciting change of pace, to which Mikhail shot back that his original pace was going to be four hours of reading mobility theory, a light lunch, two hours in the workshop, and then an afternoon sitting around playing Xbox. He _liked _that pace, he really did.

"Sasha, just get the damn tank onto lift platform," he hissed at him, gesturing to the elevator shaft at the end of the hangar where all the Chertkovsky Regiment's main battle tanks were stored, even though Vanya was the driver. Aleksandr nodded sheepishly, pulling on his tanker's helmet and gesturing to Vanya, who was practically sleeping while standing. He snapped his fingers and then pushed Vanya over, who, without opening his eyes, muttered an acknowledgement and climbed up the hull, then slipped into the open driver's compartment. Mikhail was already in the fighting compartment, sitting to the right of the gun, where the tank commander always sat. Aleksandr clamored up through his hatch into his seat on the left side of the turret, using the small gaps between the ERA blocks as a quick handhold, and slipped inside. As they'd done hundreds of times before, they powered up the gas turbine engine and once warmed up, made a three point turn drove all the way to the platform

"I hope for your sake that she shows," Mikhail told him across the breech of the gun, still looking irritable.

"If she doesn't so what? We get some fresh air, enjoy the sea breeze, have an American lunch. Nothing wrong with that."

Mikhail rolled his eyes at his excuse and Aleksandr shrank into his seat, then pretended to clean the eyepiece of his periscope. The long ride up the shaft to the dock level, Aleksandr felt worse and worse until they reached the surface, the rising sun pouring in through their open hatches. Squinting into the red-orange blur, he just barely managed to make out a dark spot directly at his 12 o'clock, a human silhouette. Standing in the middle of the blood-red NERV insignia on the floor over the dock number, one hand on her hip and the other holding something, was a girl with glasses.

"Miss Mari," he said, switching to English quickly. In Russian, she was Provisional Unit Pilot Makinami-Illustrious, but in English, inevitably, all the tankers in the Chertkovsky Regiment called her 'Miss Mari', especially since there didn't seem to be anything 'provisional' about her. She was the only one trained to operate that beast of a machine deployed to Bethany Base, after all. "Uh, good morning, ma'am!"

She turned to look at him, ocean breeze blowing her hair in the two tails she kept it in, and grinned at them mischievously. "Good morning, pups."

Over the next two hours hour, the UNSS _Regulus _steamed out ninety kilometers immediately south of Bethany Base, where it proceeded to propel itself in very wide circles over and over as it tested its new power plant. A few of her crew went out by the stern with fishing rods, while another two unfolded a backgammon case and began playing.

"So, we're putting it through the regular paces, right?" Vanya asked in Russian, peaking his head through his hatch, goggles pulled over his helmet.

Mikhail said nothing but shrugged in the direction of Aleksandr, who likewise sat in a raised position. In front of him and with one leg resting against the gun barrel, Miss Mari leaned back on the turret, a very pleased expression on her face. He pulled at his collar anxiously and looked down at Vanya. "Yes, but a little smoothly. No sharp turns. No drifting. Absolutely no jumps." He let go of his collar. "And please switch to English," he insisted.

He coughed needlessly. "Uh, Miss Mari, if you're going to ride like this, please hold on."

Aleksandr half-expected her to assure him there was no need to call her 'Miss', but instead she grinned cat-like at him, before holding onto the steel housing of the handy 1G46 rangefinder sticking out of the turret.

From an observation level, two American sailors watched as, very carefully, the loud tank drove around the deck with its hatches open and a young woman perched casually on the turret, hair flowing erratically behind her.

"Are they supposed to do that?" one asked.

The other lowered his monocular. "The Russians like riding on their tanks. 'Call 'em 'tankodesantniki'. I'm pretty sure I've seen a _quilt _of Red Army troops riding on a tank."

The other nodded. "And what about _her_?"

Inside the turret, Mikhail checked his headset in his helmet and tapped Vanya's seat with his foot. "Comrade, we're coming up on a ramp, about thirty meters ahead. Watch your speed please."

"Yes, Comrade," Vanya muttered sleepily. Despite that, he did throttle down as the tank advanced down the ramp onto a lower tier of the deck. Despite Aleksandr's reservations, this was actually not an uncommon training method for tank crews and drivers in particular: they were, after all, expected to operate their vehicles _inside_ Bethany Base. The navy guarded the _Ural-2 _after all.

"Turn right and stop."

The tank spun sharply right and came to a halt about two meters from the edge of the deck. As previously instructed, Aleksandr carefully turned the turret to face the ocean, not so fast that it would throw Miss Mari off.

Mikhail checked his watch. "Quarter to ten," he stated. "I think we're due for a mid-morning break." And with that, he clamored out of the turret and over to one of the exterior compartments that made a ring along the turret's rear. Aleksandr watched him, then turned to look at Miss Mari's posterior, then up at her face. She looked back at him, completely at ease.

He swallowed. "Would you like to see how it operates? The tank, I mean."

She seemed to ponder his offer, then nodded, and he carefully climbed out and sat on the rim of his own hatch. "Vanya, take five."

With Mikhail reading a book and Vanya asleep again, both on a pair of folding chairs they'd found further inwards on the deck, Aleksandr was lying on his stomach half-way off the turret, helmet sitting by his feet.

"And that's my station: turret rotation, gun elevation, Buran imaging sight, French SAGEM, 1G46 laser rangefinder, et cetera. Along with the 1V528 ballistic computer at my seat, all three positions have the new unified GLONASS-link computers," he said, pointing with a hand.

Miss Mari, a little above him, nodded. "It's a lot smaller than an entry plug."

"Entry plug?"

She looked at him. "In my Eva."

"Oh, you mean the Provisional Guard Weapon back at Bethany," Aleksandr repeated. "'Eva' does sound better." Reaching forward, he flipped a switch, causing the main lights to dim while the screens and LED-lit keys to remained on. He leaned back and looked at Mari, who took the opportunity to get a better look.

"Something up?" she asked without looking at him.

He immediately shook his head. "No ma'am."

By this point, she was half-way into the tank through the gunner's hatch, while Aleksandr leaned away, resting an arm against the antiaircraft machinegun's barrel.

"Are all the tanks at Bethany like this?"

He shook his head. "Technically, no."

"Technically?" her voice echoed up.

He had to think for a correct answer. "All of the Eurasian tanks at Bethany are T-80, but there are two battalions. We use T-80U, the other uses T-80B. Ours are newer, theirs have older electronics."

"Don't forget Sheridan," Mikhail said from his folding chair, not looking up from his book.

"Sheridan?"

Aleksandr turned back quickly. "Yes, of course. The Americans also have tanks, light tanks called Sheridans. They're intended for the smaller passageways in the 'Limbo' section."

"So you might say," Mari said, diving further into the tank, "That they guard Limbo while you guard Cocytus."

He looked surprised. "Yes, actually, we say exactly that. Our tanks operate much better in the deep-freeze section, thanks to their gas turbine power plants." He frowned. "How did you know that?"

"Aleksandr!" Mikhail yelled in Russian. "Please ask our distinguished guest if she's ready for lunch. We're going to go down to the mess hall before the rush." He gave Vanya a push to the shoulder, waking him.

"We're actually going to go eat now, Miss Mari," he said into the turret. "Should we…?"

"Pull me up," she instructed.

Aleksandr blinked, glanced over at the pair of legs sticking out of the hatch, and circled around the turret, adjusting his gloves. Perched at the edge of the hull, he gingerly grabbed Mari's legs and pulled, and she quickly lifted herself out, another grin on her face. She pointed perpendicular to him, at a package wrapped in red cloth, propped up against the smoke discharges that lined either side of the turret.

"What's that?" he asked, still holding on to her.

"Your reward."

Their "reward" consisted of four boxed lunches, consisting of white rice, vegetables, tempura shrimp and a little fish, stuffed into lacquerware boxes, which she distributed to each of them to their surprise.

Aleksandr opened the box and looked at the neatly-ordered contents. "What's this called?"

"Japanese food," Mikhail immediately snickered.

"I know that it's Japanese food," Aleksandr said, forcing a smile. "I meant when it's prepared like this."

"Lunch," Vanya offered, still in Russian.

"_Bento_," Mari said.

"Bento," Aleksandr repeated. "If I may ask, Miss Mari, where did you get this? Vladivostok?" All the Chertkovsky Regiment tank crews went to the Pacific city of Vladivostok, in the RFR, on leave.

"I have my ways," she assured him. She seemed to _really _enjoy saying that. "Can you guys use chopsticks?"

"Please," Mikhail interrupted, taking a pair of disposable chopsticks from her. "We spend two days every month eating nothing but Chinese food in _Hǎishēnwǎi_, I think we can use chopsticks," he explained, using the Chinese name for the city.

Mari nodded, seemingly impressed as all three of them broke them apart and began eating. "_Itadakimas_," she offered a few seconds after they'd already started eating.

"It's very delicious, thank you, ma'am," Aleksandr assured them, shooting glances at his two comrades.

"Vanya, go ask those _yanki _watching us if they can spare four Pepsis," he asked, using the loanword in Russian.

With a whole tempura sticking out of his mouth, the driver nodded and jogged off promptly. The three of them remained, legs crossed, sitting on the deck in the shadow of the tank, Miss Mari in her loose blouse and cargo shorts, and the remaining crewmen in their digital-pattern field uniforms and red insignia.

"Is that where you're from? Vladivostok?" she asked between bites. Mikhail didn't respond, so Aleksandr took this to be directed at him.

"Oh, not at all," he explained. "It's just where the regiment takes leave. I'm from New Sukhumi…it's, well, it's in Abkhazia, on the Black Sea," he explained. "Mikhail is from Dzerzhinsk, Russia."

"I'm from Minsk, Belarus," Mikhail corrected him. "I was born in Dzerzhinsk."

"Which is why he has that accent," Aleksandr muttered. "And Vanya…Ivan Petrovich Mirsaidov, is from Tashkent, but he'd been educated in London. You may have noticed his English is superior to ours."

"To be honest, I hadn't…"

Vanya came running up, a little out of breath and holding cradling four sodas in his arms. "They didn't have Pepsi, comrade. Just Coca-Cola. They said it was the same thing."

Mikhail grunted. "It's _not _the same thing, but hand it over," he instructed, waving his hand up at him.

"Since we're from Eurasia, we all drink Pepsi, just like our parents," Aleksandr explained humorously. "Oh, Comrade, before you open it…"

He was too late to keep Mikhail from opening the can's stay-on tab, who only narrowly avoided being sprayed in the face by aiming in the can in Vanya's general direction, causing him to jump away and hiss something unintelligible. "See if I ever do you any more favors!" he added in English.

"Right, right, right…" Mikhail dismissed him. When Vanya sat back down, the four continued their lunch uninterrupted.

"And you, ma'am?" Aleksandr eventually asked.

"What?"

"Well, I told you where we're from, where are you from?" he explained.

"Oh." She finished the last of her rice. "Don't call me 'ma'am'. Or 'Miss'."

"…oh."

"Don't push it, comrade, she's the EVA pilot," Mikhail whispered in Russian, while Mari gave him the cat-eyes again. "She's not like you or me."

"No kidding."

The sun had risen to almost its highest point when they'd emptied the lacquerware boxes, the three tankers cleaning their mouths with napkins while taking care not to get rice on their uniforms. Aleksandr turned to his crewmates, rising to his feet. "Should we begin with the practice shells."

Mikhail took one look up at the observation level behind them. "You know what? Why not have Miss-…I mean, Mari fire the practice rounds. They're already loaded, you know how to teach her."

"Really?"

"Well, we have fired hundreds of them," Vanya admitted.

Aleksandr turned back to Mari, who was already two-thirds of the way into the tank, entering through the gunner's position hatch. Sighing, he grabbed his helmet and climbed to the commander's hatch.

"Remember the basics: point tank gun in direction of enemy," Mikhail shouted, standing up alongside Vanya and putting distance between them and the tank.

Mari was already sitting in Aleksandr's lowered seat when he dropped himself all the way into the commander's position, and he looked at through over the breech and loading mechanism. "Well, I guess you'd have experience with high-caliber weapons. Have you ever firing a tank gun?"

"No."

"Well, there's nothing to it," he said. "This is a practice shell and not a live shell or a missile. You just point and pull the trigger, and the reduced propellant charge does the work."

He pointed in her direction. "Arm the ballistic computer."

Mari obediently pressed a switch. "Now, switch your input to the laser system. It's the one at the top."

She glanced at a bank of keys and pressed one.

"And then toggle the autoloader. We've only one kind of ammunition here anyway, so set it to sequence mode." He craned his head. "Sorry, I'm not used to this position."

Mari giggled.

"It's that switch."

Mari pushed a button labeled **A/L** on a separate control bank and with a high-pitched whine followed by metal clanking, the hydraulics beneath and next to her raised a shell from the carousel, turned it, and then rammed a propellant charge behind it into the gun.

"In the past, they used to have a crewman whose sole job was to do that," Aleksandr said. "So the tank had four men riding in it, instead of three and an outside mechanic."

"That sounds like the worse job in a tank."

"I…suppose it might have been." He glanced at the computer screen in front of Mari, part of which had changed color when the shell was loaded. "Now that that's done, you can go onto aiming."

"That I know how to do," she said, smiling.

"I assume the sights are a little different than on your giant robot," he said, trying not to sound sarcastic.

"Shooting is shooting, _Sasha_," she said, squeezing the firing controls excitedly.

"Well, perhaps," he admitted. "And you're firing blanks at no targets. But I expect that you're not as close to the gun you're firing when practice-shooting in your Eva."

Mari already had her eyes and glasses up to the periscope, her fingers opening and closing rapidly on the controls. She bobbed excitedly in her seat.

"So you're the lone pilot?" Aleksandr asked, watching her. "Of the Eva, I mean."

To his surprise, Mari leaned back from the periscope, her expression neutral, and looked at him across the breech. She gave another catlike smile, staring at him over the rims of her glasses. "Yes and no."

Immediately, she leaned forward, pressed her head up to the periscope, and squeezed the trigger. The turret, the entire tank, shook from the blast of a shell being fired.

_**Author's notes:**_

_So, I'm not entirely certain what I want to do with this. For a long time, I entertained the idea of writing a day-to-day story in the Evangelion Universe, largely from the perspective of non-Eva pilot characters. I had the idea even before the Eva Rebuild series began, but the Rebuilds offer more in the way of international NERV locations than the TV series did. I'm going to try and keep the tone true to this first chapter (if interest warrants writing more anyway, I guess) even as I move back and forth through time, which might be a challenge given what we know happens at Bethany Base, but we'll see how this plays out. _

_Maybe the single hardest part of this, funny enough, was coming up with a name I didn't hate. I took inspiration from a certain popular Polish TV series about the Second World War, but originally considered calling it _Three Tankers and a Babe _in more of a tongue-and-cheek manner. I'm not entirely happy with what I settled with, but whatever. _


End file.
